{"id":21653,"date":"2021-05-04T13:41:55","date_gmt":"2021-05-04T13:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&#038;p=21653"},"modified":"2021-05-04T16:23:02","modified_gmt":"2021-05-04T16:23:02","slug":"underground-railroad-barry-jenkins","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/underground-railroad-barry-jenkins\/","title":{"rendered":"Barry Jenkins On Why \u2018The Underground Railroad\u2019 Had To Be A Series"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_21654\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-21654\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-21654 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/05\/UGRR_S1_Unit_101_2287R_thumb-e1620133077752.jpg?w=700\" alt=\"Barry Jenkins\" width=\"700\" height=\"393\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-21654\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Barry Jenkins (Photo: Atsushi Nishijima\/Amazon Studios)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Despite\u2014or perhaps because of\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/george-floyd-funeral\/\">the year<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/there-was-no-justice-for-breonna-taylor\/\">we\u2019ve spent<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/breonna-taylor-wrongful-death-settlement\/\">reckoning with<\/a> our country\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/08\/14\/magazine\/1619-america-slavery.html\" target=\"_blank\">history<\/a> of deeply ingrained racism, Barry Jenkins thinks audiences are ready for his new limited series <em>The Underground Railroad<\/em>. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have made it if I didn\u2019t feel like the audience was ready for it,\u201d the Academy Award nominated director told journalists at <a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/serena-williams-documentary-amazon\/\">Amazon<\/a>\u2019s recent virtual press conference.<\/p>\n<p>Based on <a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/bipoc-book-club-this-is-what-to-read-to-educate-yourself-about-the-black-experience\/\">Colson Whitehead<\/a>\u2019s Pulitzer Prize winning 2017 novel, the series re-imagines an antebellum America in which the <a href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/joe-biden-harriet-tubman-opinion\/\">network of secret routes<\/a> and safe houses used by enslaved Black people to escape to freedom as an actual subterranean railroad. The story follows a young woman named Cora (Thuso Mbedu) as she flees a Georgia plantation and travels north via the fantastical rails.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Underground Railroad - Official Trailer | Prime Video\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_Pq5Usc_JDA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Jenkins seemed to want to emphasize that the show isn\u2019t simply a spectacle of suffering. Only about an hour and a half of the 10 one-hour episodes actually take place on a plantation, he pointed out. \u201cYou watch the show and there\u2019s this version where\u2026you assume for 10 episodes Cora is trying to vanquish the condition of American slavery,\u201d Jenkins explained. \u201cBut what she\u2019s really after is\u2014she\u2019s trying to reconcile this sense of abandonment she feels toward her mother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, he acknowledged that <em>The Underground Railroad<\/em> traffics in imagery that may be difficult for people to sit through. That\u2019s why Jenkins wanted to adapt the novel for TV rather than film \u201cWhen you go to a movie theater it\u2019s a very captive experience,\u201d the <em>Moonlight <\/em>director explained. \u201cI wanted the audience to have the opportunity\u2014you can pause, you can skip, you can choose whom you wanna watch this with or whether you wanna watch it alone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Equally as important to Jenkins was capturing the wonder that the Underground Railroad represents in the Black imagination. To do this, the filmmaker said he reached back to his childhood perception of what the Underground Railroad meant. \u201cI remember the first time I heard the phrase\u2026I <em>saw<\/em> Black people on trains underground,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAs a child\u2026you just don\u2019t have those filters that\u2014this thing is impossible, these people <em>can\u2019t<\/em>, or that thing <em>didn\u2019t<\/em>. None of it. So, I heard it and I went, <em>Of course we built trains underground!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_21655\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-21655\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-21655\" src=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2021\/05\/UGRR_S1_Unit_105_0271R_thumb.jpg?w=700\" alt=\"Thuso Mbedu\" width=\"700\" height=\"466\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-21655\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Thuso Mbedu (Photo: Kyle Kaplan\/Amazon Studios)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Jenkins was adamant that the production use real tracks, real trains and real tunnels. They found a real private rail network in Georgia and built the tunnels around them. The result was at times overwhelming for the cast. \u201cEverything was bigger than anything I could have imagined,\u201d Mbedu said. \u201cI actually snuck away just to step back and take in everything. I couldn\u2019t believe everything that I was seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The director conceded that his unflinching series may, in turn, be overwhelming for some to watch. But, he said, that\u2019s fine too. \u201cI think the thing what\u2019s really beautiful about putting images into the world is that when someone\u2019s ready to find that image, it will be there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29097,"featured_media":21654,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38,16],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v18.5 (Yoast SEO v20.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Barry Jenkins On Why &#039;The Underground Railroad&#039; Isn&#039;t A Movie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Barry Jenkins thinks audiences are ready for his new Amazon limited series \u2018The Underground Railroad.\u2019 \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have made it if I didn\u2019t feel like the audience was ready for it.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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